Time for a Summer highlight or was it a low light?  Debatable.  Feel free to make the call.

You see, Charlene and I have been taking boxing classes for over a year.  No one ever hits back.  It’s just us hitting punching bags and getting a nice workout.  Well, Charlene seemed to be enjoying it, so I had purchased a punching bag for her, as part of a birthday gift, and we set it up in the garage.

“Wait!,” you are saying.  “You purchased your wife a punching bag?  For her birthday?  She should have punched you for being so stupid.”. Hey, I got her other nice stuff, too.  So back off and please let me finish.

Considering that I was also taking the class, I was allowed to use her gift and every now and then I would let off some steam in the early morning and knock the bag around.

Me with Charlene’s punching bag, during a peaceful moment.

So you know that feeling you get when you hit a golf ball perfectly?  Or that feeling when you hit a baseball just right?  There is a certain sound.  A “pop” and a nice fluid movement throughout.  Then there is the satisfaction.  A powerful feeling of knowing that you really connected.  Well, I had started a workout with the punching bag in the garage.  I was going through a routine, when I landed a solid left hook.  I mean it was perfect.  The “pop” was there.  The contact was solid.  It was beautiful.  I wanted that feeling again and I formed a quick plan.  I would follow with a right hook and then land another perfect left.  It was going to feel great.  It was going to be epic.

Turns out that it was never going to be.  I reared back and unleashed my right hook and “snap!”  The bag drooped over to the left.  The post had been cracked in two.  Now, I had previously been accused of breaking a punching bag at the YMCA.  I had claimed innocence.  My theory being that these bags are built for humans a lot stronger than me.  It would be impossible for me to break such a bag.  Well, I guess I was wrong.  I guess I was now to blame for two snapped bags.  I guess I should either register my arms as weapons or turn myself in as stupid.  Probably both, but most likely the later.

I gently set the busted pieces of Charlene’s former birthday present on the garage floor and hurried to my smartphone.  Before the hour was out, I had ordered a replacement part for $20.  It would arrive in a few days.  I just needed to make it a few days without Charlene noticing my path of destruction and all would be fine.  No harm, no foul.  The bag certainly was not going to talk.  It knew what I could do to it.  It was scared.  It should be.

So the next day, I was loading the family into the car to head for church and one of my children asks, “What’s wrong with the punching bag?”  Damn it!  I had been thrown under the bus by my own devilish little spawn.  Busted not even 24 hours after my crime.  A sin of being a beast.  A sin of not knowing my own power.  Okay, there were a few sins of exaggeration there.  Really, it was a sin of breaking my wife’s birthday present.  Now, that’s a deadly sin, if there ever was one.